Cold granite lm-1

by Stuart MacBride

  'Then you had to find a bin-bag to put her in.' Cameron nodded and a sparkling drop fell from his nose, splashing onto the tabletop between his trembling hands.

  'And then you threw her out with the trash.'

  'Yes…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…' After his statement, after Cameron Anderson had admitted sexually abusing a four-year-old girl, they put him back into his cell and arranged for him to appear in the Sheriff Court the next day. There wasn't any celebration. Somehow, after Cameron's confession, no one was in the mood.

  Back in the incident room Logan sighed and unpinned the little girl's photo from the wall, feeling hollow inside. Catching the man who had abused her and disposed of her body as if it was nothing more than household rubbish, had left him feeling dirty by association. Ashamed to be human.

  Insch settled himself down on the edge of the table and helped Logan stack up the statements. 'Wonder if we'll ever know who she was?'

  Logan scrubbed at his face with his hands, feeling the first rasp of stubble under his fingers. 'I doubt it,' he said.

  'Anyway,' Insch dumped the statements into the case file and gave an expansive yawn, 'we've still got enough on our plate to worry about.'

  Roadkill.

  This time they took one of the pool cars to the hospital, WPC Watson driving.

  Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was a lot busier than it had been the night before. They arrived just in time to see lunch getting served: something boiled with boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage.

  'Remind me to go private,' said Insch as they passed a housekeeper trundling a steaming trolley that reeked of cabbage.

  They gathered all the PCs who'd been questioning the patients and staff together in an empty day room to get their updates. There wasn't much worth listening to, but they went through them all anyway, thanking the uniformed officers for their work. No one had seen, or heard anything. They'd even been through the security tapes: no blood-soaked figures running off into the night.

  The inspector gave something like a rousing speech, and sent them all back to work. That left only Logan and Watson. 'You two better go make yourselves useful too,' said Insch, beginning the familiar hunt through his suit. 'I'm off to speak to that doctor we saw last night.' He ambled off, still hunting for the elusive confectionery.

  'So,' said WPC Watson, trying to sound efficient. 'Where do you want to start?'

  Logan thought about her legs, poking out from beneath his T-shirt in the kitchen. 'Er…' he said, deciding that now was neither the time nor the place. 'How about we go take a look at those security tapes. See if there's anything that's been missed.'

  'You're the boss,' she said and threw in a jaunty little salute.

  Logan tried to keep his mind on work as they walked through the hospital, making for the security guard's station. But it wasn't working. 'You know,' he finally mustered the courage to say as they reached the lift. 'I still owe you a pint from last night.'

  Watson nodded. 'I hadn't forgotten, sir.'

  'Good.' He punched the lift button and tried to look casual, resting against the railing that ran round the inside of the elevator. 'How about tonight?'

  'Tonight?'

  Logan felt the colour starting to rise into his cheeks. 'If you're busy it's OK. You know, some other night…' Idiot.

  The lift shuddered to a halt and WPC Watson smiled at him. 'Tonight would be good.'

  Logan was too happy to say anything else until they got to the security room. It was compact: a long black desk with a wall of little television screens above it. A bank of video recorders whirled away, taping everything that went on. And in the middle of all this sat a youngish man with bleached-blond hair and spots dressed in standard security-guard brown with yellow trimmings and a peaked cap. Looking like a jobbie in a hat.

  He explained that there were no security cameras watching the room where the murder took place, but they did have them in all the main corridors, A amp;-E, and all the exits. Some of the wards had them too, but there were 'issues' with videoing sick people getting medical attention. Privacy and stuff.

  There was a pile of tapes from the previous night. The search team had already been through them, but if Logan wanted to have another pass it was OK by him.

  That was when Logan's mobile phone went off, the sound loud and intrusive in the small room.

  'You know,' said the guard sternly, 'mobile phones have to be switched off!'

  Logan apologized, but this would only take a minute.

  It was Miller again. 'Laz! Beginning to think you'd fallen off the arse of the earth, man.'

  'I'm kind of busy right now,' said Logan, turning his back on the spotty youth with the turd-brown uniform. 'Is it urgent?'

  'Kinda depends on what your point of view is. You anywhere near a telly?'

  'What?'

  'Television. Moving pictures-'

  'I know what television is.'

  'Aye, well, if you're near one: turn it on. Grampian.'

  'Can you get regular television on any of these things?' Logan asked the security jobbie.

  The spotted youth said no, but Logan could try one of the rooms down the corridor.

  Three minutes later they stood in front of a flickering television screen with an American soap opera dribbling away on it. Behind them, on the bed, an old woman with purple-rinsed hair was snoring it up, her teeth floating in a glass.

  'Gee, Adelaide,' said a suntanned blond with perfect teeth and a washboard stomach. 'Are you saying that baby's mine?'

  Dramatic music, close-up of over-made-up brunette with pneumatic breasts; cut to commercial. Stair-lifts. Crisps. Washing powder. And then the face of Gerald Cleaver filled the screen. He was sitting in a wingback leather chair, wearing a cardigan, looking all avuncular and wholesome. 'They tried to make me look like a monster!' he said and the camera cut to a shot of him walking a jolly labrador. 'They accused me of terrible crimes I didn't commit!' Another camera jump, this time to Cleaver sitting on a low drystone dyke, looking earnest and pained. 'Read about my year of hell, only in this week's News of the World!'

  'Oh God,' said Logan as the paper's logo spun on the screen. 'That's all we need.'

  34

  Logan and Watson grumbled their way back to the security office. Berating the paper and its decision to give Gerald Cleaver money for his story. The spotty youth in the shitty-brown uniform was in the process of charging into action, straightening his peaked cap as he went.

  'Trouble?' asked WPC Watson.

  'Someone's stealing Mars Bars from the gift shop!' And off he ran.

  They watched him disappear round the corner, feet and elbows flying in his haste to reach the scene of the crime. Watson gave a wry smile. 'How the other half live…'

  A second security guard – a heavy-set man in his early fifties, with a comb-over and eyebrows like a terrier – was now manning the console. He was swigging from a bottle of Lucozade, his head buried in a copy of the morning's paper. 'Kiddie-Killer Suspect Stabbed To Death!' was splashed across the front page. When Logan told him why they were there, he grunted and waved at a pile of labelled video tapes.

  Settling down at a console with a tape player, Logan and Watson started to wade their way through the videos. The search team that had been here before had made things a lot easier, winding the tapes forward to when Roadkill was murdered. Slowly, Logan and Watson worked their way through them all, the security guard slugging away at his Lucozade and sucking his teeth in the background.

  Figures jumped and jerked across the screen, the camera only taking one frame every three or four seconds, making everything look like experimental Canadian animation. The faces were pretty blurred, but it was still possible to make people out when they got closer to the camera. Half an hour later Logan had recognized a handful of the hundreds of faces that had drifted through various parts of the hospital: the doctor who'd treated Desperate Doug; the nurse who thought he was a monster for beating up an old man; the PC who was supposed to be guarding the geriatric hi
tman; the doctor who'd declared death on Roadkill last night; the surgeon who'd spent seven hours stitching Logan's insides back together; and Nurse Henderson, her black eye clearly visible on the tape as she stomped along, dressed in her street clothes – rugby shirt, trainers and jeans, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

  'How many more tapes have we got to go?' asked Logan as Watson gave a huge yawn and stretch.

  'Sorry, sir,' she said, composing herself. 'Two more exit tapes and that's the lot.'

  Logan slipped the next one into the machine. A side entrance to the hospital. Faces flashed by, talking and laughing, or people with their heads down as they stepped into the biting wind. Nothing suspicious. The last one was the main A amp;-E reception area. The tape here ran at normal speed, ready to capture the all too common flare-ups of antisocial behaviour that came with a hard night's drinking. Logan recognized more faces here: he'd arrested a lot of them. Peeing in doorways, petty larceny, vandalism. One bloke had been done for 'giving himself a treat' in Union Terrace gardens with a wine bottle. But again, there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Not if you didn't count the sudden explosion as two staggering drunks launched themselves at a huge bouncer who had his arm in a makeshift sling. Screams, overturned chairs, more blood. Nurses trying to pry them apart. And then, at last, a blurry police constable charged into the crowded room and put an end to the whole thing with three liberal doses of CS spray. After that it was mostly rolling about on the ground, screaming. But no sign of Roadkill's murderer.

  Logan sat back in his seat and rubbed at his eyes. The time stamp on the video said ten-twenty. The PC with the CS spray stayed to make sure everyone was still alive. Ten twenty-five: PC hero accepts a cup of tea before returning to his vigil outside Roadkill's door. Ten-thirty…Logan was getting bored with this. They weren't going to find anything on the tapes.

  And that was when Nurse Henderson came back into view, the black eye a lot more noticeable. Logan frowned and paused the tape.

  'What?' Watson squinted at the tableau.

  'Notice something?'

  WPC Watson confessed that she didn't, so Logan tapped the screen, right on top of Nurse Henderson, still carrying the overnight bag. 'She's wearing her uniform.'

  'So?'

  'She was wearing her civilian clothes in the other tape.'

  Watson shrugged. 'So she got changed.'

  'She's still carrying the bag. If she got changed, why didn't she leave her bag in the lockers?'

  'Maybe they don't have lockers?'

  Logan asked the older security guard if the nurses' changing room had lockers in it.

  'Aye,' he said. 'But if you think I'm showin' you a video tape of nurses gettin' changed: you've got another bloody think comin'!'

  'This is a murder investigation!'

  'I don't care. You're no seein' any tape of naked nurses.'

  Logan bristled. 'Listen, sunshine-'

  'We've no got cameras in there.' He grinned, showing a perfect set of dentures. 'We tried, but the governors were havin' none of it. Didn't trust us to keep our minds on the job. Shame. I coulda made a fortune floggin' those tapes…'

  The administration centre of the hospital was nicer than the bit sick people occupied. Here the smell of antiseptic on squeaky linoleum was exchanged for carpet and fresh air. Logan found himself a helpful young woman with bleached-blonde hair and an Irish accent and sweet-talked her into going through last night's shift records.

  'Here you go,' she said, pointing to a screenful of numbers and dates on her computer. 'Nurse Michelle Henderson…Did a double shift last night. Got off at about half-nine.'

  'Half-nine? Thanks: thanks a lot. You've been very helpful.'

  She smiled back at him, pleased to have been of assistance. If there was anything else she could do for him, just give her a call. Anytime. She even gave him a business card. Luckily Logan didn't see the look on WPC Watson's face as he accepted it.

  'Well?' she demanded as they rode the lift back to the ground floor.

  'Henderson gets off shift at nine-thirty. Nine-fifty she's on camera, changed and ready to go home. Ten-thirty she's back in her uniform again, leaving the building.' Watson opened her mouth, but Logan carried on, grim triumph in his voice. 'We were looking for someone covered in blood. Mrs Henderson just got changed and walked right out of there as if nothing ever happened.' They grabbed a pair of uniformed officers from the search party and called back to base. DI Insch was not in the best of moods when the call was put through: he sounded as if someone had been massaging his backside with red-hot pokers. 'Where the hell have you been?'he demanded, before Logan could get a word in. 'I've been trying to call you for the last hour!'

  'Still at the hospital, sir. All mobile phones have to be switched off…' But mostly he'd switched it off so Colin Miller couldn't call him back.

  'Never mind that! Another kid's gone missing!'

  Logan felt his heart sink. 'Oh no…'

  'Aye. I want you to get your arse over here to Duthie Park: the Winter Gardens. I'm pulling in all the search teams. Bloody weather's getting worse, snow's going to make any evidence we've got disappear. This is now our number one priority!'

  'Sir, I'm just on my way to arrest Nurse Michelle Henderson-'

  'Who?'

  'Lorna Henderson's mother. The kid we found in Roadkill's steading. She was at the hospital last night. She blames Roadkill for her daughter's death and the break-up of her marriage. Motive and opportunity. The Fiscal agrees: apprehension and search warrants.'

  There was a moment's silence on the other end of the phone, then a muffled conversation as Insch gave someone else a hard time. And then the inspector was back. 'OK,' he said, sounding as if he was about to clobber someone. 'Pick her up, chuck her in a cell and get your backside over here. Roadkill's not getting any more dead. This kid might still be alive.' They stood on the top step in the snow while Logan rang the doorbell again. 'Greensleeves' started up for the fourth time.

  Watson asked Logan if he wanted her to kick it down, her breath fogging in the chilly air, nose and cheeks bright red. Behind them the two uniforms they'd liberated from the hospital search team expressed their agreement. Anything to get out of the freezing cold.

  He was just about to give her the nod when the door opened a crack and Nurse Michelle Henderson's face appeared. Her hair looked like a chimpanzee had slept in it.

  'Can I help you?' she asked, the chain still on the door. Her words reeked of stale gin.

  'Open up, Mrs Henderson.' Logan held up his warrant card. 'You remember us. We need to talk to you about what happened last night.'

  She bit her lip and looked at the four of them, standing there like carrion crows against the falling snow. 'No,' she said. 'I can't. I have to get ready for work.'

  She went to close the door, but WPC Watson already had her boot wedged into the thin gap. 'Open up or I'll break it down.'

  Mrs Henderson looked alarmed. 'You can't do that!' she said, clutching the neck of her dressing gown closed.

  Logan nodded and pulled a thin sheaf of paper from his inside pocket. 'We can. But we don't have to. Open up.'

  She let them in.

  It was like stepping into an oven. Michelle Henderson's little flat was a lot tidier than it had been the last time they were here. Everything was dusted, the carpet hoovered, even the Cosmopolitans on the coffee table had been stacked in a neat pile. She sank into one of the lumpy brown armchairs, drawing her knees up under her chin, like a small child. It made her bathrobe fall open and when Logan sat on the sofa he took care not to avail himself of the view.

  'You know why we're here, don't you, Michelle?' he said.

  She wouldn't look him in the eye.

  Logan let the silence grow.

  'I…I have to get ready for work,' she said, but made no move to get up, just hugged her knees all the tighter.

  'What did you do with the weapon, Mrs Henderson?'

  'If I'm late then Margaret can't get away. She has a toddl
er to pick up from nursery. I can't be late…'

  Logan gave the nod and the pair of PCs left the lounge to give the house a quick once-over.

  'You got blood all over your clothes, didn't you?'

  She flinched, but didn't say anything.

  'Did you plan it?' Logan asked. 'Make him pay for what he did to your daughter?'

  More silence.

  'We've got you on tape, Mrs Henderson.'

  She stared hard at a spot on the carpet that had somehow eluded the hoover.

  'Sir?'

  Logan looked up to see one of the PCs standing in the doorway clutching a mound of blanched clothes. There was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, rugby shirt, two socks and a pair of trainers all bleached almost white.

  'Found these hanging over a radiator in the kitchen. They're still damp.'

  'Mrs Henderson?'

  No response.

  Logan sighed. 'Michelle Henderson, I'm arresting you for the murder of one Bernard Duncan Philips.' Duthie Park was a well-manicured stretch of parkland on the banks of the River Dee, complete with duck pond, bandstand and fake Cleopatra's Needle. It was a favourite spot for families, its wide-open spaces and ranks of mature trees giving plenty of scope for children to play. Even buried under a foot of crisp white snow there were signs of life. Snowmen in various stages of construction punctuated the white plain like standing stones: silent watchmen, lords of all they surveyed.